Scrooge, Nietzsche and the genius of St Paul

Fr Cameron has written a most personal, heartfelt foreword to this collection of short essays on St Paul. While studying for the priesthood he realised that “this was a man I needed to get to know better”. Indeed, he admits, “I wanted to be like him who was so much like Christ.”

We can all echo that. For me, it was the power of St Paul’s prose that attracted, even before I thought about its content. Who can read the lines “Now I see through a glass darkly …” without wanting to come “face to face” with their author and learn more?

In this collection it is hard to single out particular reflections. I could easily bookmark every page. But the American scholar and academic Anthony Esolen writes insightfully about the “conversion” of Ebenezer Scrooge from Dickens’s Christmas Carol, arguing that he has not just become more generous but that “he has passed … to the realm of grace.”

Fr Richard Veras does the same in his response to the well-known lines: “We know that all things work for good for those who love God.”

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